


The Diary of T.M. Riddle

by luminousnight



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23329471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luminousnight/pseuds/luminousnight
Summary: At ten, Harry is a lonely little boy with no friends at all. All that changes when he comes across a black notebook bearing the name T.M. Riddle.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Comments: 17
Kudos: 128





	The Diary of T.M. Riddle

They were working on a piece of creative writing that day in class.

Harry had already got into a scuffle with one of Dudley’s gang at the beginning of the period and got his few sheets of papers ripped for his trouble.

It was a pity. He’d had a fantastic dream last night of a flying motorcycle and had been eager to create an exciting adventure around that. His teacher was usually too preoccupied with the other kids to pay any attention to Harry, but even she would have been impressed with Harry’s story.

Now, though, his two sheets of paper had been torn up and he was left squeezing his masterpiece into half a sheet of ruled A4 paper. Nowhere near enough to do justice to a story about a flying motorcycle.

Despite the task set before them, the classroom was filled with a cacophony of noise. Children tittered and giggled and chatted with their neighbours. Some had forsaken the assignment entirely and created a ruckus in the games corner. Harry was unsurprised to note that the ring-leader of that set was Dudley.

"Children! Quiet down now, please, children!" cried Ms Charis, her voice quavering. Her neat ringlets were covered in a layer of frizz, a line of shiny pink gloss ran across her cheek and she looked close to tears.

It was clear to everyone that she was a young, inexperienced thing. Nothing like their form teacher last year, Mrs Briggs, whose forehead was set in a perpetual frown and held the class in an iron grip.

The poor, frazzled teacher, tried in vain to control the hyperactive children and get them settled and working on their assignment. 

None of this furore reached Harry who was completely focused on reliving his dream and blind and deaf to everything else.

_...the ride was bumpy, but Prince Harry did not notice because just then, blocking the beams of starlight there appeared a huge -_

Harry frowned down in consternation at what he had written down to the very last inch. He had run out of space! 

Dudley's mousy friend Piers Polkiss chose that moment to let out a ear-splitting shriek. There was silence for a minute and then the whole class fell into giggles. 

Curiosity getting the better of him, Harry looked up slowly, but remained hunched in himself. There was no need to draw their attention onto himself. The small group of children were now completely ignoring Ms Charis and had started a game of tag, bumping into desks and shelves, disrupting even the more studious kids, hooting raucously and causing mayhem. 

At that moment, Dudley looked up from where he was trying to stage a cricket game with Piers and suddenly caught sight of Harry looking over at them. His eyes gleamed malevolently and Harry could not duck down fast enough, but it was too late. 

Dudley smirked and, without any warning at all, rushed right at Harry where he was sitting at the far corner of the classroom. Harry jolted in shock and would have got up and scrambled away but even he did not seriously anticipate that Harry Hunting would be a thing inside the classroom.

So he was still in place, helplessly shocked, when Dudley slammed into him with the force of a train, using his head as a battering ram. Harry flew back into the shelves behind him and blacked out.

***

"...rry...Harry...Harry!"

Harry groaned and sat up quickly, startled. 

"Are you all right, my dear," Ms Charis asked fretfully, hovering somewhere over him, "Are you hurt? Do you need to go see the nurse? Let me check you over, you bumped into the shelf rather hard…”

Harry opened his eyes and realised that he was still in the classroom next to the shelves where he must have fallen after getting slammed by Dudley. A crowd of children had gathered around him whispering excitedly and and staring back at him with wide eyes.

"'m fine," he mumbled when he realised Ms Charis was waiting for his answer.

"Is there blood? Did you see any blood?" he heard Piers ask his mates excitedly. He ignored it and got to his feet shakily holding his glasses to his face. As he got up, something fell out of his lap and landed on his feet with a whump. 

His glasses were cracked again and there would be hell to pay with his Uncle that evening. At least if it had snapped he could have simply taped the two sides together and no one would have cared.

"Back to your seats, children. Give Harry some space. No, don't crowd around him like that, he needs space," Ms Charis gently shooed the children away from him and herded them back to their seats.

The crowd slowly dispersed as the children lost interest at the lack of blood. 

Harry followed them and went to take a step towards his desk, but tripped over the black book that had fallen against him earlier. He wobbled dangerously and would have fallen on his face again had he not caught himself against the shelf just in time.

"Clumsy idiot!" taunted one of Dudley's gang, Peter, a burly red-head, nearly as big as Dudley, and the rest roared with laughter.

Harry cringed in embarrassment as his face turned a violent red. 

Turning his back to the classroom, he bent and picked up the book, intending to shelve it back in its place. He frowned as he noticed that it was fully plain black with no cover, title or name, and he did not know where to place it. 

He flipped it back and forth but all the pages were blank. There was no library tag on it nor a stamp indicating that it was the property of the school. The only mark was in the inside cover claiming that it belonged to one T.M. Riddle.

…But there were no Riddles in his class.

"What's that you have there, Harry?" Priscilla Shelley asked nosily, craning her neck to see around his shoulder at what he was holding. 

“Nothing,” he whispered, “just my notebook.” 

And he felt a thrill going through his spine at the lie. 

***

_...the ride was bumpy, but Prince Harry did not notice because just then, blocking the beams of starlight there appeared a huge snake. It was just flying there in front of him and Harry was afraid it was going to fly into this motorbike, but…_

It was dark outside and Harry lay on his stomach on his little cot working steadily on his story. The sole light bulb shedding light on his work was dim with use and Harry suspected that it wasn’t going to last for much longer. It would then be pitch black inside his cupboard for the next few months until his Uncle remembered to replace the light bulb.

Harry chewed on his pencil as he thought of the best way to phrase the next part of the sentence. 

There was only a glimmer of guilt, a slight twinge. Aside from that, he felt perfectly justified taking the notebook. It obviously did not belong to anyone in his class, and it was so musty and tattered that no one would want it anyway. Priscilla had brought a new notebook to class that week, it was pretty and pink and covered in glitter. The other children too all had their own notebooks, covered in pictures of princesses and heroes, all brand new and smelling like the printing press. 

A flash of idea struck him and he grinned and popped his pencil out of his mouth, reading over what he’d already written.

Suddenly, right in front of his very eyes, his writing disappeared! 

Harry cried out. All his work! Pages and pages of it, all gone! Simply vanished. His first thought was to suspect that Dudley had somehow set it up.

“No,” he choked out, devastated.

And then, in the middle of the page, traced out as though someone were sitting in front of the book writing in it, there appeared the words:

_What happened then?_

Harry simply stared at it, scarcely believing his eyes. No, unable to believe his eyes at all. 

“What?” he gasped, hardly daring to raise his voice, lest whatever spirit that was making the words appear hear him.

Those words disappeared too, and the following appeared:

_Hello? Are you there? I really liked your story. What is your name?_

He was jolted out of his shock and scrambled backwards, terrified. He backed himself against the door of his cupboard and stared wide-eyed at the notebook, his heart beating wildly.

His immediate reaction was to get rid of the notebook, but his Uncle had locked him in his cupboard with a beating upon seeing his cracked glasses and Harry was going nowhere at the moment.

The words did not disappear but remained on the page. Harry remained where he was.

A few moments passed and there was no indication of any further writing, but no sign of his own writing either.

With hands trembling, Harry finally plucked the courage within himself to pick up his pencil and write back.

_My name is Harry Potter._

The reply was almost instantaneous.

_Hello, Harry Potter. My name is Tom Riddle._

**Author's Note:**

> Quite into all the Harry/Tom tropes at the moment.


End file.
